As “classics” go, “Black Magic” is very much a mixed-bag.

A fanciful and dark account of the life of a real-life historical figure, the magnetic and captivating 18th century magician, con-man and hypnotist Cagliostro, it features impressive Italian locations, soaring sets, dazzling costumes and Orson Welles, all in service of a plot that’s “inspired by” historical events and so uneven in emphasis that it’s hard to make much sense out of it.

But if you’re a film buff, all you saw in that previous paragraph was “ORSON WELLES.” The film is remembered for being a later addition to the Orson Welles directing canon — on-set stories related that he directed himself in his own scenes and perhaps some other sequences under credited director Gregory Ratoff. A “Wellesian” will see The Master’s Touch in the way this shot is lit or framed, that camera angle, in the overlapping “radio drama” styled “realistic” dialogue in some sequences.

Dismissed upon its release — the New York Times lumped the initialed-but-unsigned review of it in with a review of a forgotten bio-pic of the trotter/harness-racing “pacing” horse “The Great Dan Patch” — “Black Magic” has a few things to recommend it. Chief among them is Welles, a magician in front of and behind the camera, on and off set.

There are many times we get the sense that a quote famously attributed to Welles is true, that he had more “fun” making this movie than any other he filmed.

Having just watched another adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers,” knowing that Dumas the Elder wrote about Cagliostro, and this being the season of holiday hams, I was in the right mood for a little Orson prestidigitation.

The story is framed in an 1848 argument between Dumas the elder (Berry Kroeger) and his “Camille” writing Dumas “fils” (son), played by the always riveting Raymond Burr.

We hear in voice-over and see the tale of the hard life of the Gypsy boy Joseph (Guiseppe) Balsamo, the execution of his falsely-accused mentalist mother and father and his own rescue just as minions of the high-handed Viscount de Montagne (Stephen Bekassy) have finished beating young Joseph and pulled the branding iron out of the fire to blind the boy as punishment.

Balsamo would not forget this great wrong. He grows up, not as a medium but as a healer/persuader, and becomes a traveling wagon show magician and hypnotizer (the word hadn’t been coined) who gets the attention of the scientist for whom “mesmerizing” was coined, the Viennese Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer.

Mesmer (Charles Goldner) is amazed at Balsamo’s eye-contact powers of persuasion, perhaps discounting the way the key light (on set) narrows to just his eyes as he zeros in on a “patient” or “victim.” But when Mesmer tries to convince Balsamo to join him in studying this power for the aid of mankind, Balsamo flees.

Remaking himself as Count Cagliostro, he dazzles crowds and “cures” via the power of suggestion. That brings him into the court of aged, chuckling Louis XV (Robert Atkins) of France, the scheming consort Madame du Barry (Margot Grahame), the heir (Lee Kressel) and the dauphin’s wife, Marie Antoinette (Nancy Guild).

Cagliostro falls for a Marie look-alike, Lorenza (Guild again) just at the time a scheme is hatched to discredit the easily-discredited Marie with The Affair of the Diamond Necklace. Cagliostro, hypnotizing Lorenza away from her titled suitor, is drawn into it.

Welles works magic act sleight of hand into not just “The Act” scenes, but in character conversations that reveal Cagliostro’s thinking about this scheme and “What’s in it for” him.

He ensures that he’s shot in crazy-eyed close-up, sometimes underlit from below. And he turns that sonorous voice on an indeterminate Euro-accent that comes and goes, the way such performances did in the days before dialect coaches were on set.

This film comes close enough on the heels of “Lady from Shanghai” and “Macbeth” that we can appreciate Welles seeking or scripting roles that play to his power, presence and voice on screen. Like “Macbeth,” Cagliostro isn’t a mastermind, just a chancer swept along by fate and the ideas of others. But he always owns the room.

The finale has a swordfight that’s pretty impressive in the seamless way the big man is stunt-doubled in all the more dangerous bits. But he’s at his best in a thundering royal trial sequence, and in his commanding answer to a “prank” “cure” staged at court to discredit him when he first meets Louis XV.

“There’s one little matter they all forget,” Cagliostro purrs. “If I can cure, I also can AFFLICT.”

Then, as now, Guild seems a little over-matched, cast in a double role above her abilities, although she delivers a mean “You insolent fishwife” in the best Marie Antoinette tradition.

Valentina Cortese, as a loyal woman who was by Balsamo’s side after his Roma rescue from blinding, makes a better show of it playing a more compelling character.

When the production cast the Armenian character actor Akim Tamaroff as Gitano, the Roma friend who rescues him and becomes Cagliostro’s lifelong sidekick, Welles also found himself a sidekick for life, bringing in Tamaroff for assorted roles, including Sancho Panza in his unfinished shot at “Don Quixote.”

“Black Magic” may largely be regarded as a fat check and European vacation/starring-role between “Lady from Shanghai/Macbeth” and Welles’ grand turn in a character role in “The Third Man.” But there’s fun stuff in here, and a big, broad performance to relish at the center of this big cast/big sets (black and white) Hollywood production.

Not having to take the entire hit if the film bombed, even if it did mean he’d quickly transition to character support for much of the rest of his career as this film finished off the idea of the actor Orson Welles as “leading man” and “box office” must have been liberating, if bittersweet in memory.

He’d make a few classics in the ’50s and 60s, in front of and behind the camera. And he’d become the ultimate Hollywood insider/outsider, revered as Our Great Talent, but not to be trusted with Hollywood money or Hollywood productions as star or director.

It’s no wonder he called this his “most fun” film to shoot. He’d never be this dashing and handsome on screen and never have this much flattering control of his image and performance in a big Hollywood movie again.

Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Orson Welles, Nancy Guild, Stephen Bekassy, Margot Grahame, Valentina Cortese, Frank Latimore, Charles Goldner, Robert Atkins, Berry Kroeger, Raymond Burr and Akim Tamiroff.

Credits: Directed by Gregory Ratoff and Orson Welles, based on a story by Alexandre Dumas. An Edward Smalls production on Tubi, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:45